A Day In The Life Of Beat Collective ...A Funk & Soul Band For Hire!

I’m Steve Fulcher and I play the drums and manage the day-to-day running of Beat Collective. On Friday 15th April 2011, we performed at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry at an event held for, coincidently, Ricoh, the office equipment manufacturer. Below is the photo diary of our day from meeting up early afternoon to arriving home at dawn.

Preparing to leave

Usual preparations for me include making sure we have all the correct gear necessary for the gig, printing out the set lists and filling the van with fuel. Most of the gear remains in the van these days, so I can, after many years of lugging gear around at crazy hours of the morning, travel relatively lightly.

Meeting up

The van was left at Nick’s, who is the guitar player, so after picking him up we head to our storage unit to collect a few extra bits before making our way to my house to meet up with the rest of the band. The journey to Coventry will take us about 2.5 hours, so we set off at 3.00 pm to give ourselves plenty of time for the 8.00 pm set up time.

Travel

Oh how we love the M5! Actually, we can’t complain as it was pretty clear… and open, unlike the M1 which was closed due to a scrap yard fire, causing Tom, the keys player, who was making his own way up from London, one or two delays!

Eating on the road

No road trip would be the same without a stop for some over priced, ridiculously unhealthy and actually pretty unfulfilling service station delights. After spending the evening’s earnings on a stale sandwich, we get back on our way.

Arrival at the venue

After a little bit of shoddy navigation on my part (how complex can the entrance to an arena be?!) we finally find the main entrance, and Lou runs in to find out how to make it around to the load in entrance.

Unfortunately, it appears that the load in is not only a long way but also involves a lift…a sure sign that the load OUT is going to be painfully long winded!

Set up and sound check

After a bit of confusion about whether we’re on the right or left (depending on which way you enter the building!!) we start setting up all the gear. This we can usually do in around an hour, although today it takes longer as the load in was quite a distance. Most of the band use in ear monitoring; so sound check is usually straightforward as the fold back levels are pretty much the same at each venue. This saves time and also means that the sound we send to the audience is clearer and free from feedback!

Changing room

The changing room for this gig was a fair walk from the stage but it did have a separate room with en-suite shower and toilet, so that made us happy. Our standard attire is black suit, tie and white shirts for the musicians, with the singers wearing semi-formal dresses. We aim to look as smart as possible but it’s also important that we can move around comfortably on stage.

Performance

As is often the case, timings got pushed back a little and we ended up not getting on stage until 10.30 pm. We performed our first set, and then the bar closed. With a casino in the next room it didn’t take long for the room to start clearing, so after a quick 15 minute break we got straight back on stage and tried to hold on to the rapidly depleting audience! We did our best, and although it didn’t remain as busy as the first set, we did manage to bring people back in to the room. We had a couple of stage invasions and some rather drunken antics from “off duty” managers, but it was all in good humour and we had a great show.

Packing down
Ah… the good old pack down. I could say that we’re fond of it but that would be telling lies! Everyone in the band has a job to do and we all pitch in so we’re pretty good at getting this done fast and efficiently. All was going to plan until the lift broke down with Kiron, our bass player in it. After some rather hilarious wails from Kiron we managed to free him from the lift, and get him and our equipment out safely. Fortunately, we had already loaded out the heavy stuff so we finished loading out using the stairs…

Drive home
We arrived back in Bristol safely, and all band members were home by 4.00 am. Beat Collective had a 13 hour day in total and we were all looking forward to getting into bed and having a good sleep.